The first time Adrian and Jamie kissed was a total accident.
A few weeks before, Jamie had decided it was time for him and Adrian to start a band, since, as he pointed out, they were eighteen and pretty soon would graduate from high school. "If we don't start a band," he pointed out in that Southern drawl of his, "we'll have to work for a living."
Adrian didn't think that was quite as bad as Jamie made out—after all, Adrian planned on being an astrophysicist, which wasn't exactly a Dilbert job—but Jamie scoffed.
"I'll ask you one thing." Jamie looked up languorously from his seat leaning against the side of Adrian's bed. "Do astrophysicists have legions of screaming groupies?"
"Brian May does," Adrian said, peering at his signed Panic poster.
"Brian May is the guitarist of Queen," Jamie said.
Adrian had to admit he had a point.
Jamie looked at Adrian, his dark eyes full of good humor. "Only you would know that the guitarist of Queen is an astrophysicist."
"Hey, you knew who he was too," Adrian said, bouncing up and down a little on his bed. It still had the blue-and-white striped sheets his mom had bought him when he was nine. "'Sides, only poseurs think that rock began the day MCR put out The Black Parade."
"I agree that there was music," Jamie said. "I love Morrissey as much as the next guy. I just don't think that glam rock fits in with the dark, gloomy, ambiguously-gay aesthetic we're going for here."
"Queen is totally ambiguously gay," Adrian said. "Freddie Mercury died of AIDS."
"Stop knowing so much about Queen," Jamie said, "or I will hurt you."
The idea of Jamie hurting anyone was extremely odd. He was short, pale and scrawny, generally giving one the impression that he'd forgotten to eat for the past month. He believed that black went well with everything, especially more black. His hair featured a cheap black dye job and the sort of casual messiness it took hours to achieve. And despite his stated goal of a dark and gloomy aesthetic, when he smiled it was full of a good humor that lit up the entire world.
If Jamie and a kitten fought, Jamie would forget halfway through that he was supposed to be fighting the kitten, start cuddling it and get his eyes scratched out for his pains.